1. Mail Today, Friday, October 24, 2008Page 30
it’s friday! culture
S
HE STANDS naked on a
56 x 31 inch canvas; her
bangled hand gingerly
holding her right breast,
her hair combed care-
lessly, a necklace falling
seductively and a maroon cloth
tied casually around the navel.
Her skin, the colour of wheat, is
set against a background spla-
shed with blue, red, black and
beige. FN Souza painted her in
1962 and called her Nude.
The streets are red, a woman in a green
saree is walking by and a man stands at
the black door, his paint brush dripping
with green, the colour seemingly bor-
rowed from the woman’s saree. This is
Vivan Sundaram’s interpretation of Pas-
sage. Not too far, countless computer-
generated human figures frolic in a play-
ground muddy with plaster and acrylic on
paper. This is Nataraj Sharma’s canvas,
titled Playground.
At the Frame, Figure, Field, a group
exhibition at Delhi Art Gallery (DAG)
these are part of the 22 large-format
works on display. Not only are the can-
vases large, even the names are luminous
– MF Husain, Rabin Mondal, Satish
Gujral, Gogi Saroj Pal, Jaya Ganguly,
Shobha Broota, Altaf Mohammedi, Pari-
tosh Sen…
Frame, Figure, Field. The lyrically allit-
erative tag piques me. I ask curator
Roobina Karode if it is picked off a son-
net. “No,” says Karode, “It is a summing
up of the gamut of art and artists on dis-
play.” For Karode, the parameters were
set: large canvases. The concept: To dis-
play the pictorial vocabulary that has
evolved over the ages. “Souza’s strokes
are vehemently anti-academic; Satish
Gujral’s architectonic sculptural piece
blurs the divide between painting and
sculpture while Jaya Ganguly uses white
on a black canvas intrepidly. Each artist
narrates his own personal script,” adds
Karode.
Walk by frames and you can pick the
intricacies of this personal script. Sovan
Kumar uses the truck to tell the tale of
the destruction of rural life, Sohan Qadri
lets colour percolate through handmade
paper, Gogi Saroj Pal’s Valley of Flowers
oozes dark red and a woman with red
wings hovers in a red sky while P Khem-
raj’s Charpai looks mysterious in its
beige and crimson. Every frame comes
from collection of Ashish Anand, Direc-
tor, Delhi Art Gallery.
For Anand, DAG began as an entrepre-
neurial risk, on way he fell in love with art.
This exhibition is an “effort to address
the diverse range of initiatives and con-
cerns that make perceptible the elusive-
ness of Indian Modernism.”
On the wall in gold is an honest state-
ment: The artistic purpose is not to dis-
play brilliant renderings and drafting
skills. But when you look into the large
eyes of Souza’s Nude, questions about
skills become redundant. I stand mes-
merised near the Nude. And for her to
speak.
Frame. Figure. Field. is on at the Delhi
Art Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, till
November 20
DelhiArtGalleryputsupagroupshowbystalwartsfromtheartworld
(Above) Pull, an oil on canvas by GR Santosh, and Niamagiri (top left), an
acrylic on canvas by Sovan Kumar, are part of Delhi Art Gallery’s group show,
Frame. Figure. Field. that features big names from the world of art
An untitled oil on canvas by MF Husain
Big canvas
for great
names
by Preeti Verma Lal
When it comes to showcasing
exuberant folk culture, no
other state does it better than
Rajasthan. The state’s heritage
of traditional music and dance
is as rich as its colourful fabrics
and stories of valour. That’s
what was on display in full
spirit at the recently con-
cluded exhibition, A Musical
Journey Through Rajasthan,
which showcased the state’s
folklore and music culture.
The exhibition, from the col-
lection of the Sangeet Natak
Akademi and Rupayan Sanst-
han, the Rajasthan Institute of
Folklore, Jodhpur, was dedicat-
ed to the memory of Komal
Kothari, who had founded this
institute four decades ago.
Kothari, an eminent ethno-
musicolgist and folklorist, will
long be remebered in the
annals of Rajasthan as he dedi-
cated his life to the preserva-
tion and continuity of folk
music and tradition in the
state. This encompassed musi-
cal instruments, puppets, tex-
tiles, ornaments as rural archi-
tecture, traditional knowledge
and indigenous, local flora. He
combined this integrated
vision with scholarship and a
humane insider’s view, which
led to a meticulous folk tradi-
tion research.
Curated by Kuldeep Kothari,
secretary of the Rupayan
Sansthan and Suneera Kasli-
wal, senior artist and Professor
at the Department of Music,
Arts Faculty, Delhi University,
the exhibition focussed on the
musical traditions of some
groups of the state who have
practised music traditionally.
The Langas and Manganiyars,
for instance, are the tradi-
tional caste musicians. The
renowned Nimbuda song pop-
ularised by the Bollywood flick
Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam origi-
nally belongs to the Mangani-
yars. There are the Bhopas,
narrators of the epics of Pabuji
and Dev Narayan. The other
groups include the Teratali,
Kalbelias and the Hindu and
Muslim jogis.
The instruments used by
these musicians — the Sidhi
Sarangi, Surnai, Ravanhatta,
Surinda and Dhak, were on dis-
play. Through folk instruments,
painted scrolls, photographs,
live and recorded music and
films, this exhibition narrated
the story of these musicians.
A live performance of Pabuji
ka Pad by Bhopa musicians,
narrated by Sugna Ram on the
Ravanhatta instrument,
marked the conclusion of this
unqiue exhibition. The songs
were dedicated to their lord
Pabuji. A lively Ram taught the
tricks of making the Ravan-
hatta with bamboo, coconut,
goat skin and horse’s hair. The
unique instrument with its
mesmerising melody was also
available on sale at the venue.
megha.paul@mailtoday.in
by Megha Paul
Bhopa musicians performed on the concluding day of the
exhibition, showcasing the musical heritage of Rajasthan
Musical heritage from the sand dunes of RajasthanRAHUL IRANI